A first for Safdarjung: kidney transplant by team of six docs

Doctors at Safdarjung Hospital performed the first-ever kidney transplant at the facility earlier this month.

The other government hospitals doing kidney transplants in Delhi are the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) and Army Hospital (Research & Referral).

A team of six Safdarjung doctors from the departments of urology, nephrology and anesthesia performed the transplant on Ram Pravesh Pandey, 52, on October 8. A gardener from Samastipur, Bihar, Pandey suffered from the chronic kidney disease (CKD).“He was on stage 5 of CKD and had been on maintenance dialysis for the last three years,” said Dr Anup Kumar, head of department, urology.

The surgery was guided and supervised by experts from AIIMS and BLK Hospital who have been performing a kidney transplant surgery almost once a week.

“The hospital has reached a milestone with this transplant surgery that was envisaged some years ago. Though we had registered for the transplant programme long ago, due to unavoidable reasons it got delayed,” said Dr BD Athani, medical superintendent, Safdarjung.

The transplant guidelines make the presence of at least two nephrologists mandatory to perform the surgery.

The hospital was working with only one senior nephrologist for the last few years. It was only after the hospital appointed another nephrologist last month that the surgery was performed.

“It has been nearly six years since I took training for transplant surgery; the rest of our team members have been trained for three or more years now, but the only reason why we didn’t go ahead with it was the lack of another nephrologist,” said Dr Vimal Bhandari, consultant surgeon, who is in charge of the renal transplant unit. The hospital has already shortlisted five more CKD patients for transplant in the coming days, and about 50 dialysis patients are on the waiting list. “The next surgery is scheduled for October 22,” said Dr Vindu Amitabh, HoD, nephrology.